Death Parade 07-10

I summon the old man in defence mode. That is how this game works, right?

Well, with Kyo busy with work, and me with my midterms and essays, one could say that Metanorn’s Death Parade coverage kind of… died (harhar). But look, we’re back now! I’m running away from my essays because I want to write something fun for once OTL Sorry for the delays, and let’s get on with the show~.

Episode 7 was just more exposition. Luckily, it also gave us some closure on how Ginti’s judgement went. …Or how there was a lack of closure, in a sense. Judging from the context, it seems that Ginti just couldn’t figure out where to send Mayu. Which means that she’s sticking around, or at least for a little while. I would have assumed that she would be sent along to reincarnation, since her actions during her judgement were pretty selfless. Or at least they would have seemed selfless on the outside (I don’t know if  Plus she never seemed to have any profound darkness within her soul. But oh well, this means she might be a more regular member of the cast (well, kind of since we’re a few episodes away from the end), so I’m not going to complain. As of the end of episode 10, it looks like Ginti brought back Harada for some reason (probably to get Mayu out of there since she seems to be annoying Ginti), but we’ll see where this goes in episode 11, probably.

Nona seems really intimidating, but it seems like even she breaks the rules one in a while. Though maybe Ginti is following the rules, since it only seemed to be specified that the arbiters were the ones not allowed to have human emotions, not their helpers. …Mayu seems more like a hinderance than help, but oh well. In any case, Nona sent along the problem cases to Decim, even though it seemed like she wasn’t supposed to. The other thing is that Decim seems to be an odd existence in general, since judging from how everyone was speaking, he has human emotions implanted in him. It’s kind of hard to tell, since he’s so stoic, but maybe that’s why he’s been able to stay hidden for this long. Of course this won’t last, since Oculus seems to have tentacle-raped Clavis’s memories out with his beard. I’m sorry, I just really wanted to write that sentence.

Back to Decim having human emotions though, Ginti seems to display more emotions than Decim does. But maybe it’s just that he was assigned them when he was created, since many of the arbiters (or characters like Quin) seem to have emotions. Maybe they’re not real emotions, but fabrications or something. Ginti seemed to ridicule humans when it came down to it, instead of admiring them like Decim seems to. Ginti also seems way less sentimental.

Before we get to Chiyuki, there was the judgement between Shimada and Tatsumi that was pretty dramatic. Both of them being murderers was certainly new, and (at first) what Tatsumi said about Shimada having the right idea seemed to make sense for his character. Tatsumi would have seen a lot of darkness in his job and he obviously had issues with his wife’s death. …Of course, his character went to extremes, but more on him later. Shimada seemed to be pretty justified in his murder as well, since the police weren’t doing anything and he was obviously distraught over what happened to his sister. Had it ended at that, with Tatsumi’s wife thanking him and Shimada doing what he could for his sister, maybe they could have gone to reincarnation. …And then the part after the game happened.

Even though he knew it was futile, Shimada still decided to re-murder Tatsumi, which was pretty brutal to watch. Tatsumi was making the situation worse of course, but what was surprising was that Shimada decided to inflict pain even though he knew that Tatsumi had already been killed by him once. He knew what the consequences were for killing Tatsumi again were, and he even gave up a chance to possibly see his sister again. Maybe if he didn’t know the whole point of the game, he might have seemed a little redeemable, but even after Chiyuki explained everything, Shimada still wanted to inflict pain. That’s not justice at all, that’s just self satisfaction.

It’s not a party until there are at least 3 casualties

As for Tatsumi, he kind of set an example with how arbiters with human emotions might be a bad idea. Sure, they wouldn’t all have the same emotional baggage as he did, but Tatsumi was really drunk on his power of judging people. It would probably just take one overly enthusiastic arbiter to ruin the system for all of them. However, it seems that having arbiters without emotion is a problem too, as Chiyuki pointed out. It seems like they need to find some kind of middle ground or something. Though who can really say if there’s a “best” way to judge someone’s life.

Decim’s identity crisis of sorts seems logical in that the judgements do have quite a few flaws in them. Or mostly, what Chiyuki said about the judgements not bringing out inner darkness, but instead creating it. The way the arbiters do things does seem rather dramatic and people panic when put in tough situations. The darkness thing does make sense on some level, but I guess the judgements don’t have to be so dark all of the time, and they could be more flexible. Some people would probably act like Chiyuki and maybe reject playing games if they knew they were dead, but it seems that Sachiko proved that people can act rationally if they know that they’re dead. Like how Shimada proved that people can act on their darkness, even if they know that it’s the end. Though since apparently god has left this place a long time ago, there’s not a lot of room for flexibility since the guy who ran the place is gone.

Yay, we finally have a name for Chiyuki now. It should be interesting to see how Decim finally judges her. Not like bringing out the darkness in her soul or anything, since Death Parade just proved that that’s not effective and Chiyuki seems too empathetic to really show any in the first place. I mean that Decim’s method of judging her will be interesting to see. Personally, I’d say that what we’ve seen of Chiyuki throughout various judgements shows that she should be reincarnated, but perhaps Decim has different ideas. Plus the judgements seem to be passed due to the person’s life combined with how they act during the game. Since Decim rejected receiving her memories, I guess he’s already forgotten what Chiyuki’s life was like. Maybe that will play a part.

What was interesting in this episode (though maybe not the most plot relevant) was that Sachiko’s husband was the old man who was judged in the Death Billiards OVA.

Whoa, well the story seems to be heading in an interesting direction for the ending. I was expecting the problem to be with Chiyuki being there, not Decim having human emotions. Episode 10 was a nice, happy story that was much needed after all of the drama of the last couple of episodes. Maybe not happy overall, since Oculus has found out Nona’s secret and Chiyuki has to move on soon, but it was nice that she at least had happy memories regarding her mother and that book. The same goes for Sachiko and her acceptance of death. Of course there are dramatic, dark stories revolving around the concept of death, but again, it’s nice that Death Parade moves away from that darkness on occasion. Plus I have to agree with the philosophy that the judgements and life in general mean something. …I say this not sentimentally, but in the context of watching this anime in general, because if the message was that everything in the show was meaningless, why animate it at all? But also, I say this since someone had to have set this place up for some kind of reason. If the judgements really didn’t matter, why have rules or care where human souls go anyways? But I guess we’ll see where the anime decides to end soon enough.

Next episode involves skating, apparently(?). (Though the joker card was a pair of skates…)

About Karakuri

University student and the one at Metanorn who's known for wearing glasses. Likes blood, insanity and plot twists, but also plays otome games and adores cute romance anime. It balances out... somehow.